20 THE GENETIC RELATIONS OF THE ‘CETACEANS. 
the olfactory organ and of the nasal bones, depart less than they 
from the typical forms. It would therefore seem probable that 
the Denticete (Toothed whales) have become differentiated, as now 
recognized, little or not at all in advance of the Mysticete (Whale- 
bone whales), or in other words that the latter are not offshoots 
from the former, but both from one original stock.” 
Dr. Brandt of St. Petersburg, to whom we are indebted for so 
many valuable memoirs in various departments of zoology, in a 
recent memoir on the classification of the Baleenoidea* (or Mysti- 
cete), has misunderstood the tenor of these remarks, and supposing 
that I meant that the Balenoids (or Mysticete) and Delphinoids 
(or Denticete) were differentiated and developed from the Zeuglo- 
donts in the Tertiary epoch, has expressed his dissent therefrom. 
Such an interpretation illustrates the difficulty of expression so 
that there shall be no ambiguity. In view of my real sentiments, 
the interpretation in question struck me with astonishment on 
the first perusal, and at the same time appealed to my sense of the 
ludicrous. In season and perhaps out of season, in arguments 
with friends, and in public discourses, I have insisted upon the 
inadequacy of the paleontological record, and the absolute neces- 
sity, in view of our knowledge of the radical differences between 
the various types of animals, of extending the phylum of the 
various existing stocks into a most remote but necessarily indefi- 
nite past. Ihave even incurred the censure of geologists for in- 
sisting that the mammals, for example, must have been developed 
in a far earlier epoch than we have palxontological evidence of, 
and that even the palzozoic might not be too recent for their birth. 
The absurdity of the idea, that the specialized Denticetes and Mys- 
ticetes of the Tertiary epoch could have originated in that epoch 
and from tertiary Zeuglodonts, is such that it never occurred to 
me that it could be entertained by any scientific evolutionist, much 
less attributed tome. The remark that the gap between the Ferme 
and Cete is bridged over by the Zeuglodonts of the Tertiary epoch, 
and that from the Zeuglodont stem have descended the recent 
whales, certainly does not legitimately convey that idea, although, 
after consideration of the passage, I must confess that one unac- 
quainted with any of my other oe TE not be entirely in- 
2 "* BRANDT (Jobann Friedrich). Uel Cl ; a 
ae patton! mit Beriicksichtigung ea e aa pt en derselbe <B 
- de PAcadémie ipériale des des Sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, t. 17, pp. nih oa 
ees also < Mél nges Biologiqt tin. .... t. 8, pp. 317-333. 
